Aunt M'riar departed, not to be too late for her 'bus, and Gwen stayed for a chat. She often spent half an hour with the old lady, trying sometimes to get at more of her past history, always feeling that she was met by reticence, never liking to press roughly for information.
The two thin old palms that had once been a beautiful young girl's closed on the hand that was even now scarcely in its fullest glory of life, as its owner's eyes looked down into the old eyes that had never lost their sweetness. The old voice spoke first. "Why—oh why," it said, "are you so kind to me? My dear!"
"Is it strange that I should be kind to you?" said Gwen, speaking somewhat to herself. Then louder, as though she had been betrayed into a claim to benevolence, and was ashamed:—"The kindness comes to very little, when all's said and done. Besides, you can.... She paused a moment, taking in the pause a seat beside the arm-chair, without loosing the hand she held; then made her speech complete:—"Besides, you can pay it all back, you know!"
"I pay! How can I pay it back?"
"You can. I'm quite in earnest. You can pay me back everything I can do for you—everything and more—by telling me.... Now, you mustn't be put out, you know, if I tell you what it is." Gwen was rather frightened at her own temerity.
"My dear—just fancy! Why should I want you not to know—anything I can tell, if I can remember it to tell you? What is it?"
"How you come to be living in Sapps Court. And why you are so poor. Because you are poor."
"No, I have a pound a week still. I have been better off—yes! I have been well off."
"But how came you to live in Sapps Court?"
"How came I?... Let me see!... I came there from Skillicks, at Sevenoaks, where I was last. Six shillings was too much for me alone. It is only seven-and-sixpence at Sapps for both of us. It was through poor Susan Burr that I came there. To think of her in the Hospital!"